This study aimed to examine whether there are differences in the transmission of exchange rate changes on export prices (coefficient of pass-through) the soy complex (beans, meal and oil) between the United States, Brazil and Argentina. Moreover, the specific objectives were to a) describe the characteristics of American markets, Brazil and Argentina in terms of the exports of soybean complex, b) estimate the degree of pass-through of American markets, Brazil and Argentina, and c) review differences in the degree of pass-through between the three countries. The analysis period was from January 2003 to January 2012. As a method, we used time series econometrics to estimate the proposed model, the following procedures: checking the stationarity of the series; selection of lag for the VAR auxiliary; Johansen cointegration test, estimating the cointegration vector, and diagnostic tests for model. The results showed that the United States is the most competitive in the passthrough to the export price of grain and soybean meal. As for soybean oil, the most competitive country in the passthrough is Argentina. / Este trabalho teve como objetivo principal analisar se há diferença na transmissão da variação cambial nos preços de exportação (coeficiente de pass-through) do complexo da soja (grão, farelo e óleo) entre Estados Unidos, Brasil e Argentina. Além disso, os objetivos específicos foram de a) Descrever as características dos mercados americano, brasileiro e argentino no que tange as exportações do complexo da soja; b) Estimar o grau de pass-through dos mercados americano, brasileiro e argentino; e c) Analisar as diferenças entre o grau de passthrough entre os três países. O período de análise foi de janeiro de 2003 a janeiro de 2012. Como método, utilizou-se econometria de séries temporais para estimação do modelo proposto, seguindo os procedimentos: verificação da estacionariedade das séries; seleção de defasagem para o VAR auxiliar; teste de cointegração de Johansen; estimação do vetor de cointegração; e testes diagnósticos para o modelo. Como resultados, observou-se que Estados Unidos é o mais competitivo no repasse cambial para o preço de exportação do grão e do farelo de soja. Já para o óleo de soja, o país mais competitivo no repasse cambial é a Argentina.

The sluggish development of corporate lending has remained the central concern of EU monetary policy makers as it is considered to hinder seriously the resurgence of growth. This paper looks at the development of loans to large corporations vs SMEs in the pre-crisis and post-crisis period and wishes to answer: (i) to which extent do allocated loan volumes actually contribute to Output growth? (ii) which factors determine the development of loans, considering above all loan interest rates? and (iii) what causes differences in loan interest levels across the EA? The results indicate that different loan developments in the EA explain very well differences in output development, loans to SMEs contribute even more to output growth than those for large corporations. Loan development itself is negatively influenced by the interest level which differs significantly across EA members, with small loans in addition always being charged an interest premium over large loans. The capitalization of banks, the size of banks and their internationalization play a role as well. A part of the sluggish growth of loans can be explained by the increasing use of alternative financial instruments by large firms. Interest rates in turn are following the ECB interest rate, - but this link has become looser in the post-crisis period, and long term government bond rates. Different risks faced by banks and different bank structures have become important explanatories of interest rates in the post-crisis period. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

This thesis consists of three self-contained essays in International Trade, Exchange Rates and Prices. Although independent, these essays share some common themes. The first two papers can be related to the vast literature on exchange rate pass-through to prices. While the first paper uses firm-product level data from Sweden to study firms’ export price response to movements in exchange rate, the second paper employs aggregate level data from Ethiopia and looks at the issue from the importers’ perspective. The third paper, like the first paper, uses Swedish firm-level data and investigates firms’ exporting behavior. The third paper, however, specifically focuses on export margins of multi-product firms and studies their response when exporting to destinations of different size and distance from the home country. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.</p>

This thesis examines the exchange rate pass-through into consumer prices in Central and Eastern Europe. The study is based on quarterly data of 12 countries from 2003 to 2013. Estimations are conducted using heterogeneous panel cointegration methods, namely the mean group and the pooled mean group estimators. Fixed effects are used as a reference. The thesis provides short- run and long-run estimates of the exchange rate pass-through for the individual countries and for the region as a whole. Based on the results, we conclude that the exchange rate pass-through is highly variable across Central and Eastern Europe. We find that there is no clear distinction between the pass-through rates in euro area countries, EU countries not using the euro and non- EU countries. Further, we find that the generally accepted concept of higher exchange rate pass- though in developing countries does not hold in this region. JEL Classification C23, E31, E52, F31 Keywords exchange rate pass-through, pooled mean group, mean group, heterogeneous panel cointegration Author's e-mail bara.mirkova@centrum.cz Supervisor's e-mail roman.horvath@gmail.com

Esta pesquisa investiga o comportamento não-linear do pass-through de taxa de câmbio na economia brasileira, durante o período de câmbio flutuante (2000-2015), a partir de um modelo de equilíbrio geral dinâmico estocástico com mudança de regime Markoviana (MS-DSGE). Para isso, utilizamos a metodologia proposta por Baele et al. (2015) e um modelo Novo-Keynesiano básico, sobre o qual incluímos novos elementos na curva de oferta agregada e uma nova equação para a dinâmica cambial. Encontramos evidências de existência de dois regimes distintos para o repasse cambial e para a variância dos choques sobre a inflação. No regime denominado de “Normal”, o pass-through de longo prazo é estimado em 0.0092 pontos percentuais para inflação, dado um choque cambial de 1%, contra 0.1302 pontos percentuais no regime de “Crise”. A superioridade do modelo MS-DSGE sobre o modelo com parâmetros fixos é constatada de acordo com diversos critérios comparativos. / This research investigates the non-linearity of exchange rate pass-through on the Brazilian economy during the floating exchange rate period (2000-2015) in a Markov-switching dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework (MS-DSGE). We apply methods proposed by Baele et al. (2015) in a basic New Keynesian model, with the addition of new elements to the aggregate supply curve and a new equation for the exchange rate dynamics. We find evidence of two distinct regimes for the exchange rate pass-through and for the volatility of shocks to inflation. During the regime named “Normal”, the long run pass-through is estimated as 0.0092 percent points to inflation, given a 1% exchange rate shock, in contrast to 0.1302 percent points during the “Crisis” regime. The MS-DSGE model appears superior to the fixed parameters model according to various comparison criteria.

This dissertation consists of essays that study exchange rate pass-through, China’s de facto exchange rate regime, and China’s capital controls. The first essay studies exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) by using a set of data from ten countries including four advanced economies and six Asian emerging markets. The price indices used in this essay include consumer price, producer price, import price and export price indices. While most literature only include the import price index, this essay also puts emphasis on the export price index. It investigates the asymmetry in the ERPT between depreciation and appreciation of domestic currency by using a non-linear OLS model; meanwhile, the short-run and long-run effects of ERPT are also compared with each other. It also detects possible structural change in the ERPT and finds most structural change points are around the Great Recession and Asia financial crisis. Finally, a VAR model is developed to detect the impulse responses of prices to exchange rate shock. The second essay is about China’s exchange rate regime. It has changed a lot since the 2005 reform. It is interesting and important to investigate China’s de facto exchange rate regime with the most recent data. This essay follows Frankel and Wei’s (2008) method, by applying both the basic model and new model with the exchange market pressure (EMP) variable to currency basket for the Chinese yuan exchange rate. I select the US dollar, the Euro, the British pound, the Japanese yen, the Canadian dollar, the Australian dollar and the Russian ruble as component currencies of the basket, based on free floaters, GDP and trade volume. I also add results from a VAR model, considering the endogeneity issue, and the results are consistent with those of OLS. I find the weight of the US dollar declines dramatically and the variation of the Chinese yuan becomes much larger after 2015. This implies that China has been transferring its exchange rate regime from dollar pegged to free floating. The third essay investigates the effectiveness of China’s capital controls. In recent years, after 2014, China’s foreign reserves declined dramatically, from 4 trillion US dollars to 3 trillion US dollars. There was a huge amount of capital outflows from China during 2015 to 2016. This phenomenon lets us reconsider the question: Are China’s capital controls still effective? I will use five methods to measure the effectiveness of China’s capital controls, including de jure indicators, saving-investment correlation test, covered interest rate parity, real interest rate differentials and Edwards-Kahn model. The de jure indicators I use are from Fernández et al. (2016) and Chinn and Ito (2008). I compare China with the US, the UK and Japan in the saving-investment correlation test, and with the Eurozone and Japan in covered interest rate parity, real interest rate differentials and Edwards-Kahn model. Various results indicate that China’s capital controls are still effective.

Both economists and policy makers are interested in understanding the welfare effect of economic policies, especially in small open economies such as Turkey and Iran. This knowledge is crucial for priority setting in any informed policy discussion. This dissertation aims to study the impoverishing effect of high levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) payments in the health sector, referred to as catastrophic health expenditure (CHE), and investigates the impact of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) on both the microeconomic and macroeconomic indicators of a country. For millions of people worldwide, health payments present a huge financial risk. A high rate of OOP health care payments can lead to CHE, which can force households to cut down their consumption, minimize access to their needs, or face poverty. This makes the design of financial risk protection necessary for governments in order to secure people against the financial hardship at the time of incurring CHE. This thesis comprises three essays. The first investigates financial risk protection indicators related to OOP health care payments through CHE mean positive overshoot and incidence and depth of impoverishment. This research observes that in the absence of universal health care insurance in Iran, together with a high share of OOP spending for health care (more than 52%), the Iranian households facing CHE will eventually face poverty. In the second essay, using a difference-in-differences propensity score matching approach, I seek to analyze the degree to which Iranian universal health care insurance protects households from high rates of OOP health expenditure. In this study, I evaluate the effect of the universal health insurance program on Iranian CHE. The results show that the program was successful in decreasing the rate of OOP health expenditures and CHE in Iran during the sample period. The third essay estimates the ERPT using product-level daily data on wholesale prices of imported agricultural products, where the identification is possible by using daily data on the domestic inflation rate. The results of standard empirical analyses are in line with existing studies that employ lower frequencies of data by showing evidence for incomplete daily ERPT of about 5 percent.

This study investigates the interest rate pass through from the money market rate to the lending rate by utilizing monthly data of fifteen countries, grouped as high income, upper middle income and lower middle income, over the period 1999:01-2011:09. Taking the linear cointegration test of Engle-Granger as benchmark, we employ threshold cointegration tests of Enders and Siklos (2001) in order to account for the possible nonlinearities in the pass-through process. Empirical results reveal that the pass through process is complete in three countries / Republic of Korea, Latvia and Malaysia and the adjustment of the lending rate is symmetric in two countries / Armenia and Republic of Korea. Moreover, it is observed that the adjustment of the lending rate is upward sticky in six countries / Bolivia, Philippines, Malaysia, Dominican Republic, Thailand and Croatia, whereas it is downward sticky in seven countries / Ukraine, Sri Lanka, Latvia, Peru, Kuwait, Hong Kong and Czech Republic. Furthermore, our estimation results suggest that heterogeneities in the pass-through mechanism across countries can be mainly explained by income level, inflation, market power, financial sector development and market volatility.

Univ., Diss.--Bern, 2007.

Esta pesquisa investiga o comportamento não-linear do pass-through de taxa de câmbio na economia brasileira, durante o período de câmbio flutuante (2000-2015), a partir de um modelo de equilíbrio geral dinâmico estocástico com mudança de regime Markoviana (MS-DSGE). Para isso, utilizamos a metodologia proposta por Baele et al. (2015) e um modelo Novo-Keynesiano básico, sobre o qual incluímos novos elementos na curva de oferta agregada e uma nova equação para a dinâmica cambial. Encontramos evidências de existência de dois regimes distintos para o repasse cambial e para a variância dos choques sobre a inflação. No regime denominado de “Normal”, o pass-through de longo prazo é estimado em 0.0092 pontos percentuais para inflação, dado um choque cambial de 1%, contra 0.1302 pontos percentuais no regime de “Crise”. A superioridade do modelo MS-DSGE sobre o modelo com parâmetros fixos é constatada de acordo com diversos critérios comparativos. / This research investigates the non-linearity of exchange rate pass-through on the Brazilian economy during the floating exchange rate period (2000-2015) in a Markov-switching dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework (MS-DSGE). We apply methods proposed by Baele et al. (2015) in a basic New Keynesian model, with the addition of new elements to the aggregate supply curve and a new equation for the exchange rate dynamics. We find evidence of two distinct regimes for the exchange rate pass-through and for the volatility of shocks to inflation. During the regime named “Normal”, the long run pass-through is estimated as 0.0092 percent points to inflation, given a 1% exchange rate shock, in contrast to 0.1302 percent points during the “Crisis” regime. The MS-DSGE model appears superior to the fixed parameters model according to various comparison criteria.